Podcast Review - Deutsche Welle (德國之聲)

Rating: *****
Category: news & politics
Level: advanced
Update frequency: 3-4 times/day
Where to find it: here. Click "RSS Feed" and then Ctrl+C the URL in the address bar. Paste it into iTunes (see under Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast) or another RSS-compatible audio player. Or alternatively, if you use iTunes you can just search for 德国之声.

Deutsche Welle “German Wave” is one of the four big tax-funded international broadcasters (the other three being Voice of America, Radio France International and BBC World Service), and in my opinion the one with the highest quality of reporting. They used to have an obscene amount of broadcasts in different languages, including Norwegian, but due to lack of funding and demand they've been forced to cut most of these over the last decades.

Their Chinese podcast is probably the best news and politics podcast in Mandarin out there. I really cannot overstate how good a deal you're getting here; their podcast has 2-3 hours of original content made available for free every day! It is usually divided into an hour-long program in the morning and then another three of varying lengths in the evening. Each program starts with a 新聞摘要, i.e a short summary of the day's most important news, and then goes on to in-depth stories, interviews and regular features. One of the highlights of the broadcast is 短信平臺, a feature where listeners can send SMS messages to Deutsche Welle and have them read on-air. These can range from hilarious fenqingish rants about how the DW staff are traitors to surprisingly insightful commentary.

The level is pretty advanced – from my own experience, I started listening to it regularly a year ago and even though I'm used to the format and announcers I'll still come across passages once in a while where I struggle to figure out what's being said. I've found it helpful to stay updated on news and current events in general, to avoid any confusion as to what a story is about. Finally, I find the tone of the reporting much more palatable than Voice of America, by which I mean it is critical of the CCP without getting one-sided. I also like that they do not focus excessively on hot-button China issues like Tibet, the 1989 Tian'anmen incident or Taiwan.

There's really not that much negative to say about it, though if I were to point out something, it's that the staff sometimes throw in a large amount of filler to meet the required length of the programs, like long cheesy jingles or random segments about learning German (which are quite funny to me, since I speak the language). Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to Deutsche Welle for providing such a great service but I wouldn't have minded a shorter, tighter podcast.

Note: there are downloadable Mp3s available at the DW site if you are not able to use the RSS feed for some reason.